


Pebbles

by parisique



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Lila Rossi Lies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:29:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26087230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parisique/pseuds/parisique
Summary: Life requires sacrifice. It's a fact that I know well. Even creating life requires a sacrifice - 9 months and pain, described in varying degrees by various people. There is no escaping this fact.With each new chapter in your life, you give something up and learn a lesson from it. Sometimes, you even gain it back - at other times, it is lost to you forever. For example, when she was fourteen, Lila Rossi sacrificed her honesty.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 30





	Pebbles

Lila Rossi is three when she learns to lie. Granted, she's not very good at it - there is blueberry sauce smeared around her mouth, and crumbs on the buttery fingers she hides behind her back. Her mother is staring down at her, tapping her foot with her hands planted on her hips. On the table beside them lies a tray half-filled with small blueberry pies - the other half are in little Lila’s stomach.

“Lila,” her mother chides, “did you eat the pies?”

“No, Mama,” Lila says, shaking her head. An eyebrow of disappointment shoots up towards her mother’s hairline.

“Well, then, where did they go?”

Lila searches around the room as a heavy pebble of guilt settles in her stomach - or is it the beginnings of a stomachache? - made only heavier under her mother’s stern gaze.

“The cat eated them,” Lila bursts out, one little finger pointing at their fat orange tabby.

Her mother’s other eyebrow joins the first. “Lila Melody Rossi.”

“Fine, Mama,” Lila pouts, and then, with a great heaving sigh, “I eated the pies.”

“Lila, you know I told you to wait until after dinner,” her mama says, kneeling down to Lila’s height. Her daughter staunchly refuses to meet her eyes, crossing her arms as she keeps her gaze on the floor.

“I know,” she mumbles.

“Now you’ll get a stomachache, darling,” her mama says, and then she takes her by the hand. “Let’s go get you cleaned up, hm?”

“Okay,” Lila says, and they begin towards the bathroom together.

“And after dinner, I think you deserve a time-out, young lady.”

“What,” Lila cries, “No!” But no matter how big she makes her eyes or how far she juts her lower lip out, her mother refuses to budge.

She never should have eated those pies!

* * *

Lila is six when she lies again. She remembers the pebble of guilt in her stomach when she did it for the first time, but this isn’t her mother she’s talking to, surely it’s alright?

“Yes, I am friends with Princess Fairy!” And she’s right - no little pebble weighs her down, she’s flying as free as can be!

“No, you are not,” protests the other girl on the playground.

“Yes, I  _ am! _ _”_ Lila stomps her foot and glares at the other girl. 

“Prove it,” the girl says, glaring back.

“Fine,” Lila growls, “I have long shiny hair like Princess Fairy, so there!”

“Humph,” says the girl, who has short blonde hair shorn into a chin-length bob, and then she stomps off, leaving Lila to be surrounded by all the other girls in the schoolyard, asking her what it’s like to be the friend of their favourite cartoon, Princess Fairy.

It’s at six that Lila Rossi learns two important things - that you can lie without guilt as long as it’s not to your mother, and that if you tell a lie good enough and big enough, it will bring you attention.

(I did say she learned two important things, but I never said those things were necessarily true.)

* * *

At twelve, Lila decides to test out her hypothesis. Of course, she’s finding it much harder to convince her schoolmates that she gets on with the latest celebrities. Twelve is much older than six, and apparently twelve-year-olds remember the shiny lies you told about being friends with Princess Fairy and call you out when you now claim to be friends with Jagged Stone. The fact that said twelve-year-old is the same six-year-old who was outcast for not having long shiny Princess Fairy hair is probably no coincidence.

Lila approaches her father. She hasn’t tested out her talent on him yet - she knows her mother brings guilt, her classmates throw scorn, but what will her father give her?

The answer, it appears, is a stern glare and an, “Are you sure, Lila?”

Lila nods. “Yes, papa, the teacher said so.”

Her father settles into his armchair and exhales deeply through his nose, adjusting his newspaper and returning his eyes to it - a quick dismissal. “If you say so. Give me the form and I’ll put it on the kitchen counter for you tomorrow.”

Lila uncrosses her fingers from behind her back and walks away. That Friday, the secretaries at her school file away the leave form signed off by her father as Lila stays at home, knowing that her lies bring from her father no more attention than talking to a brick wall. Well, at least it’s nothing surprising.

* * *

“It’ll be a fresh start,” her mother lies to her when Lila is fourteen. They both know it won’t be. 

They’re moving to Paris for her mother’s job - and to get away from her father, but that part just goes unsaid.

On the way there, Lila’s mother is too busy worrying about everything else to notice her daughter scheming. It’s better that way - then Lila won’t have to deal with the guilt-heavy pebble that might make a home for itself in the pit of her stomach.

She decides, two days before she’s due to start at the new French school her mother enrolled her in, that this time will be different. Unlike her old school, she refuses to be an outcast - no, this time, Lila wants a turn in the spotlight. She wants to be the one who everyone adores, the person who everyone wants to be and the lunch table with the most seats filled. Lila decides that, no matter what it takes or who she has to steamroll over, this will not be a repeat of last time. Even if there is a Mindy here, with long shiny blonde hair, Lila won’t make the same mistakes.

Instead of Princess Fairy’s best friend, she’ll be Ladybug’s. After all, Lila Rossi is no longer three or six on some school playground - she’s fourteen now, and as such, she’s entering the big leagues. She’s been given a second chance, as her mother said, a fresh start - and she’s not going to screw it up.

When Lila Rossi steps into Collège Françoise Dupont, she puts on a brilliant smile and thinks,  _ please let this be different. _ And as if some god is smiling down upon her, it is. Miraculously, everyone loves her. Mindy who? It’s only Lila now! And if she has to live a lie, well, so be it. Surely there isn’t a single soul alive who hasn’t lied.

Every night, Lila pushes away her mother’s voice in her mind, shoves away the heavy pebble threatening her with stomachaches long-forgotten. And in the morning, she wakes up and chants to herself, almost like an affirmation,  _ don’t screw it up. don’t screw it up. Don’t screw it up. _

**Author's Note:**

> as always, comments and constructive crit are welcome.
> 
> thank you for reading!! :)


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